


line without a hook

by valkemi



Series: upon cobblestone streets [3]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Family Bonding, Sleepy Bois Inc as Family, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:27:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28449933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkemi/pseuds/valkemi
Summary: Wilbur Soot has a song.How he chooses to end it is something he hasn't quite figured out.
Relationships: Niki | Nihachu & Wilbur Soot, Technoblade & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Series: upon cobblestone streets [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034211
Comments: 10
Kudos: 119





	line without a hook

“A new song?”

Technoblade interrupted Wilbur from his musings. Wilbur finally noticed that the snow had started to fall. The blanket of white peppered the land outside, and Wilbur wondered if Tommy was going to catch a cold out there. He said he was going to make some stupid cobblestone tower, and Dadza, in a moment of what could only be insanity, agreed.

“Mhm.” Wilbur paused from strumming his guitar, his hands rubbed raw from an afternoon of playing. Techno’s attention had been fixated on smelting a bunch of random shit. And Wilbur, being the good brother that he is, had decided to join him to act as a sort of background musical accompaniment while he worked.

“I haven’t figured out how to end it yet, also got some chords I wanna tinker with, but do you like it?”

* * *

“I don’t like him.” Wilbur groaned. The child that Phil picked up was such a… gremlin. Wilbur couldn’t help but be spiteful: it’s like the kid’s only talent was being annoying.

_“Why is there a child in the house?” Wilbur groaned as his father awkwardly stood in the kitchen, a blonde boy hiding behind him. The kid was scowling as if Wilbur was the intruder and not him._

_“I’m not a child. I’m a big man.” The child growled like a feral dog. Honestly, he could pass as some sort of animal. He was dirty, covered in grime and dirt, body thin but lanky. Knowing Dadza, it wouldn’t be surprising if he picked this kid up from a pack of wolves or whatever._

_“Sure, child.” Wilbur retorted, a mocking smile now painting itself on his face. God, he disliked children. They were so… childish._

_And then seemingly out of nowhere, this child had a potion in his hand._

_“Tommy, no!”_

_“Oh fu-” The potion splashed, and Wilbur’s body suddenly went limp like a noodle, slamming against the wooden floor. Motherfucker, yep, he hated children._

“Well, he’s your brother now.” Phil sighed, passing him a cup of milk. Wilbur eagerly gulped it down, feeling a tingle of his strength returning to him. “He’s just a little troubled.”

“Yeah, and what would Techno think?” Wilbur countered.

* * *

“The kid isn’t too bad.”

Wilbur slammed his hand against the strings of his guitar, interrupting the peaceful tune he’d been playing, the shock on his face evident. His brother? The antisocial king? Finding someone tolerable?

“You- you’re kidding me,” he managed to sputter out.

“I mean I don’t like children. He’s barely tolerable.” Techno snorted. His eyes were oddly serious, retreating to some far away place. “Him being an orphan doesn’t help.”

“What?” Wilbur cackled, astonished by his brother’s thinking. He could see his brother's hesitation in the knit of his brows as he struggled to find the words that he wanted.

“But he’s family.” Techno seemed to finally settle on.

“You’re no fun, Techie.” Wilbur couldn’t help tease his brother, knowing that for all his indifference, he was a big softie when it mattered. He saw how his brother was soft to the boy, always surrendering to the gremlin’s unreasonable requests. It’d be the death of Techno one day.

“Well, one of use has to be mature,” Techno grunted, roughly swatting his head as Wilbur giggled at the rising blush on his brother’s neck.

* * *

“I hate your face!” Wilbur screeched in an almost unholy manner.  
  


Techno easily dodged the stone that was aimed for his head. “Wilbur, that makes no sense. We’re identical.”

“Shut up!” How Wilbur hated how his brother could act so unaffected in moments like this. Wilbur wanted to rile him up. To make him feel as shitty and terrible as he did. “A guitar! It was just a guitar! It’s all I’ve ever wanted!” 

Wilbur could still feel the strings against his fingertips. It felt natural, like it was built for him. Like it was his purpose in life to play it.

“Because I’m trying to protect you. I’m trying to protect us,” Techno muttered, scowling in muted apprehension. “We just don’t have the space to carry it. What? You goin’ to fight mobs with a guitar now?”

Wilbur’s head rang in pain. He always got these headaches, and, god, he hated them. It's like he had no space to think. “You’re such a prick sometimes.”

He hated all the running they did. All the surviving, all the hiding. He just wanted some sort of escape from all this. If life was unfair, at least he should have some sort of break from it all.

“Techno, I’m just so tired I just-” Wilbur confessed, the ringing in his head quieting down. “I wanted something for me.”

* * *

When he wakes up in the morning, expecting his brother’s frosty silence, he’s instead greeted by a guitar. It’s obviously beaten-down, and there's a pretty hefty scratch on its soundboard, but it’s a _guitar_.

Techno feigns nonchalance when he sees him, but Wilbur can see the nervousness rattling in Techno's eyes. And Wilbur can’t help the laugh that escapes him as he smothers his brother into a forceful hug.

* * *

“Tommy, I don’t understand,” Wilbur could only feel anger at Tommy’s silence. His own voice felt alien to him as he sounded eerily calm despite the storm raging inside his head. “He’d have come home. If he was alive, he’d have come home.”

“I already told you,” Tommy muttered, hiding behind his stupid jukebox. They stood in the abandoned fields that had been overtaken by weeds, the pungent smell of rotten potatoes lingering in the air. “Techno doesn’t die.”

  
“Well, tell me again! Because it doesn’t make sense!” Wilbur snarled. “Because it seems like my brother is dead because of you! And you’re being a bitch about it-”

“Wilbur!” Phil roared, swooping in from the skies above. It made for a terrifying sight, and Wilbur couldn't help but flinch at the steely anger in his father’s voice. “Wilbur! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Dad, he was talking nonsense about Techno being alive-” Wilbur shouted, gaze locked on to the boy who seemed to stand there without consequence so fucking brazenly. Wilbur had lost his brother because of him. He had lost his twin, the only person who had always been there for him. His other fucking half.

“Tommy, go back inside!” Phil commanded, wings bristling as Wilbur felt the air tense around them. Wilbur could hear Tommy scrambling back to the house as he and Phil were stuck in a standstill. Neither being willing to make the first move, to address the ghost that hung between them.

It’s only when the snow begins to fall that Wilbur feels the resentment fading away, the coldness seeping into his bones instead. The emptiness that hasn’t gone away since Techno died settling back in.

“Phil, I don’t know what to do without him.” Wilbur concedes, the words choking whatever facade of being okay he had left. It’s then that Phil approaches, wings wrapping around Wilbur as if to hide him against the biting air and snow.

“It hurts. We’re all hurt.” Only then does Wilbur realize Phil’s crying. And it shakes his heart. Phil shouldn’t cry. Techno wouldn’t let Phil cry. “You always had Techno to protect you. But Tommy needs you to be that for him now. He needs you to be an older brother, for goodness sake.”

* * *

Wilbur held Tommy’s hand as they entered the Dream SMP. The guitar case felt uncomfortably heavy against his back. He couldn’t help fiddle with the strap as it dug into his shoulder. He’d convinced Phil to let them leave home to this foreign land so Tommy would stop. So Tommy could forget and let go.

“Welcome.” The masked-man in the green hoodie said. And Wilbur could hear some small part of him whisper that this was a mistake.

* * *

This server was supposed to be a fresh start.

“Wilbur.”

He could feel the tension ringing in his head. Of course, Tommy had to be Tommy. It was as if all Tommy could do was cause trouble. As if it was all the kid fucking knew.

“Yes, Niki.”

“You can’t be mad.”

Wilbur sighed, rubbing his temple to alleviate the incessant pounding. Even Niki couldn’t anchor him into holding this conversation right now. 

“I know.”

“Tommy is just a kid.”

“Niki, I know.”

“Then why would you-”

“I’m just trying to protect him. But he doesn’t understand. You don’t understand. No one understands!”

_“I’ll protect you.”_

_Wilbur was so cold._

_He felt so sleepy. But he shouldn’t fall asleep. Then Techno would be mad at him. Techno told him that he’d kill him if he did. So he shouldn’t._

_He could hear his brother’s sobs but that didn’t make sense. Techno never cries._

_“I’ll protect you, Wilbur. Even if it kills me.”_

_He was so cold, but he felt so warm._

“Okay. It’s okay.” Niki mutters, squeezing his hand to comfort. “When you’re ready to talk, I’ll be here.”

And then he’s alone. Left to wonder how to fix it. How to fix everything.

Wilbur hums a familiar tune, one that he never knew how to end. He finds himself pacing before he opens the chest that he left neglected for so long, hidden beneath the floors of his home.

“Oh, Techie. I don’t know what to do.”

His guitar lay abandoned there, his eyes tracing the scratch that he never bothered to fix. He picks it up, and his hand hovers over the strings, the song that he never got to finish haunting his mind, soothing the headache that never seemed to fade away.

_“Ya know, Wilbur” His brother had finished smelting, now weighing a glowing emerald in his hand, satisfied at his work. “I don’t really like music at all so I hardly know why my opinion would matter.”_

_“Thanks, you dick.” Wilbur snorted out, throwing an apple at Techno’s head, which Techno caught with ease. “Very helpful.”_

_“Yeah, but any song you’ll play, I’ll listen to.”_

**Author's Note:**

> ahahahahahahaha i updated. i lack motivation, and wilbur pov is hard. i enjoy the comments and support i've been getting though!!! main reason I haven't just deleted ahahahahaha (pog through the pain)
> 
> next is probably dream? dream pov hype
> 
> edit: okay this is completely unrelated but i was watching bambi while writing this??? and i don't remember most of the plot????? just the mom dying?????? wild


End file.
